How to create an email follow-up sequence that really converts

When someone lands on your website and enters an email address in return for free information, they are investing their trust in you.

They are demonstrating they want to trust you and are taking the first step in building a relationship based on trust with you.

The relationship is very specifically around information delivery on a single topic. They want the information you are providing for very specific reason – they want a solution for something.

In exchange for receiving information from you which will start their journey towards that solution, they are tacitly giving you permission to sell to them through relationship marketing.

Once they have read the free information you deliver, they will hopefully be hungry for more information from you. To help them on their journey, and lead them towards your solution, email follow-ups are routinely used.

An autoresponder email follow-up sequence is often the Achilles heel of any online business. If not designed well, then you will hemorrhage sales prospects every time an email hits their inboxes.

To pass people along the information journey to make a sale, individually, and as a single strategy, your email follow-up sequence must work hard to build knowledge, build trust, deliver answers and remove doubt.

Email Follow-Ups Are About People Not Products

The key to delivering an email follow-up sequence that converts highly is to construct it on two strong foundations:

1. You need to understand and deliver on the problem your sales prospect has.

Forget “email list”, that is too impersonal. You need to think about the people you are communicating with as individuals who have a shared problem or goal.

Once you understand this, you need to structure the information you deliver through your email sequence to both empathise with them about their needs, and to deliver progressive information to help them along the journey.

You cannot deliver the information they need unless you fully understand the need they have. Although this may sound obvious, many business owners fail to fully understand the real needs of their potential customers.

2. You need to understand that this is relationship marketing and that direct selling will lower trust.

At the point of entering their email address, your prospect understands they will receive emails from you for a period of time. Although they are in control of how long that period of time is, ultimately they are knowingly subscribing with the potential to follow it through to sale.

But you must remember that person is never receiving those emails in order to be sold to. They are hoping to receive enough information to either solve the problem themselves, or to make an informed decision about whether the product or service you are offering is right for them.

Key Points For Delivering An Effective Email Information Strategy

Now you understand how important it is to see everyone in your email list as an individual with a single problem to solve, you can start to consider how the campaign should be constructed.

The guiding principle I use throughout my business is know like and trust.

If somebody is allowed to get to know you, then hopefully they grow to like you and will be more receptive to the message you are delivering. Through this journey trust will build, which will make sales conversion easier.

So you need to write conversationally and personally. No “Newsletter from Acme Service Company”, but instead “The personal thoughts of Bill who solved the problem you have”.

Your email should be constructed in the same way as a conversation would be constructed if you were speaking to that person in the street. Strip out formality and speak to them as a personal friend who you value highly.

When it comes to the content of each individual email, you need to engage, educate and entice.

Now we know in marketing that you should try to sell the sizzle and not the steak. In relationship marketing such as we are discussing, you are taking them on an information journey where you both make it smell irresistible and offer them the odd little taste.

The goal of each email you send is to build a relationship between you and them, build their knowledge through an individual piece, and work on the progression that will run through all of your emails.

What I mean by a progression, is that each email you send should have massive individual value. But you shouldn't look at each email in isolation. You need to also look at the high level strategy you have for delivering a sequence of information that will guide them along the path to a sale.

So you are attacking your prospect on two fronts. Through each individual email, and through the bigger message delivered over the entire series of emails.

Think of it as a film. Each scene is an email. The email sequence is the whole story.

If you build your email sequence expertly so that it hits the spot in each individual email and throughout the sequence, you will enjoy higher conversions.

But that's the trick most people can't do. Some people can write. Some people can engage. Some people can sell. But few people can create a strategy within the context of a sequential delivery campaign.

How Well Is Your Email Autoresponder Campaign Doing?

Take a look at each of your emails individually. Does each one build trust, through the relationship it builds from the information it delivers?

Take a look your email sequence as a single entity. Does somebody receiving your emails feel like they are on a productive journey? Does each individual email clearly develop the overall theme to create a unified experience when they are placed together?

This isn't easy stuff. It actually sounds deceptively simple when we discuss it as we have in this article, but confronted with the prospect of actually writing a great email autoresponder sequence, most people will fail.

I don't want your autoresponder email sequence to fail. The business system services I provide help to minimise that potential to fail.

High conversions, less failure, another step towards owning a lifestyle business.